[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 44: In Which Someone From My Past Shows Up (Badly Timed)
The morning after the pulse was weird.
Not weird like supernatural-catastrophe weird, although that was definitely happening too. Weird like... everything felt slightly off, like the air in the penthouse had a texture it didn’t have before, thicker and heavier somehow.
I noticed it when I tried to make coffee.
The French press Azryth had gotten me, the one I’d pretended wasn’t a romantic gesture, took twice as long to brew. Not because anything was wrong with it, but because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Not from cold, not from exhaustion, although I was running on zero sleep and pure anxiety fuel, my hands were shaking because the binding wouldn’t settle.
It hummed constantly now, not the gentle background warmth I’d gotten used to, this was active, buzzing, like it was listening to something I couldn’t hear. The sigil on my wrist pulsed every few seconds, brighter than usual, and every time it did I felt a strange pull in my chest. Like something out there was tugging at the other end of a very long rope.
The spirits.
Azryth had said dozens of them were moving through the city toward us. I couldn’t see them from the penthouse obviously, but I could feel them, faint distant impressions at the edge of my awareness, like knowing there are fish in the ocean even when you can’t see any of them. You just know they’re there.
It was deeply unsettling.
"You need to eat," Azryth said, appearing from his office looking like he hadn’t slept either, which, fair. He’d spent the last two hours on calls, I’d heard him through the binding, sharp and controlled, barking orders in languages I didn’t speak.
"I ate."
"Riven, coffee is not food."
"At least it’s sustenance."
"It’s caffeine and self-neglect." He poured himself a cup from the French press, took a sip, and set it down with the kind of deliberate calm that meant he was actually very stressed. "The ward team has reinforced the outer perimeter, it should hold against minor spirits for now."
"Should?"
"Will, probably." He met my eyes. "Eat something, Riven."
I grabbed a protein bar from the kitchen, mostly to shut him up, and leaned against the counter eating it while he checked his phone again.
That’s when mine buzzed.
Not a text. A call, from a number I didn’t recognize but something about it made me pause, thumb hovering over the screen.
"Unknown number," I said.
Azryth was beside me instantly, eyes sharp. "Don’t answer it."
"It feels familiar." I couldn’t explain it better than that, something about the number, the way it pinged against my awareness, felt like... recognition. Old recognition. The kind that lived in your bones rather than your brain.
"Riven—"
I answered.
"Riven Kael." The voice on the other end was female, calm and carefully controlled in a way that suggested the calm was deliberate. "It’s been a long time."
I knew that voice.
Not from recently, from years ago, from a foster home in my teens where a woman named Sarah had volunteered on weekends, teaching kids self-defense in the church basement.
She’d been patient with me specifically, which was unusual because I’d been a difficult kid. Angry, withdrawn, prone to weird episodes where things around me would move without being touched.
She’d never flinched, never asked questions, she just... adjusted, like she already knew what was happening.
"Sarah?" The name came out before I could stop it.
A pause. "I go by a different name now. But yes. That’s me."
"How did you get this number? How do you even—"
"I felt your pulse last night." Another pause, loaded with something I couldn’t read. "Every hunter cell within a thousand miles felt it, you’re broadcasting loud enough to wake the dead, Riven. Literally."
Hunter. The word landed like a stone in still water.
"You’re a hunter," I said flatly.
"I have been since before I met you." Her voice was steady. "I was assigned to monitor your foster placement, your bloodline flagged our radar when you were eight years old."
The protein bar suddenly tasted like cardboard. I set it down.
Azryth was watching me, reading my expression, through the binding I felt his tension spike but he stayed quiet. Waiting.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"To warn you, and to help, if you’ll let me." A beat. "The pulse you sent last night wasn’t just heard by hunters, the Covenant has your exact location. So does every minor faction trying to make a name for themselves by bringing in a warden carrying infernal energy." She paused. "You’re a beacon right now, Riven. A very bright, very visible beacon, and you have maybe twelve hours before someone decides the wards around your building are worth testing."
"Twelve hours." I laughed, short and humorless. "Great timeline."
"Which is why I’m calling instead of showing up at your door." Something shifted in her tone. Softer, almost. "I have resources, a safe location, and a way to get you out of that building without every supernatural entity in the city tracking your movement."
"And what do you want in return?"
"Nothing right now." A pause that felt too long. "Just get out of there, everything else can wait until you’re somewhere safe."
"How do I know this isn’t a trap?"
"You don’t." Completely honest, no pretense. "But you also know me, or you knew the version of me that spent three years teaching angry kids how to throw a punch. That part wasn’t fake."
I looked at Azryth, he’d heard the whole conversation through the binding, I could feel him processing, calculating, weighing risks.
His expression was unreadable but through the binding: he was cautious, not dismissive. Considering.
"I’ll call you back," I said.
"Don’t take too long." The line went dead.
I set down my phone and stared at it for a long moment.
"So," I said. "Hunters."
"So," Azryth echoed.
"She says we have twelve hours before someone tests the wards."
"She’s probably right." He took my phone, examined the number, handed it back. "The pulse was significant enough to attract serious attention, twelve hours might even be generous."
"She knew about me since I was eight, she said my bloodline flagged their radar."
"Warden bloodlines always flag hunter radars." He moved back to the counter, leaned against it. "Hunters track supernatural bloodlines the way intelligence agencies track potential threats. Your line has been on their list for generations."
"So she’s been watching me my whole life."
"Monitoring, there’s a distinction." But he said it without conviction. "The question is whether her offer is genuine or whether this is the hunters using the pulse as an opportunity to get close to you."
"She said she wasn’t asking for anything."
"People who ask for nothing upfront usually want something later." His jaw tightened. "But she’s not wrong about the timeline, we can’t stay here, the wards will hold but they won’t hold forever, not against a coordinated assault from multiple factions."
I looked at the sigil on my wrist. It was still pulsing.
"So what do we do?"
Azryth was quiet for a long moment, eyes distant, thinking.
"Let’s call her back," he said finally. "And we find out exactly what kind of help she’s offering."
"What if it’s a trap?"
He almost smiled. "Then we deal with it the way we deal with everything else."
Together.
The word hung unspoken between us but the binding hummed it clearly enough.
I picked up my phone.
